His current live board shows four main food groups—dirts, loopers, delays, and reverbs. A crucial part of a balanced pedal plan is some sweet treats, and Phil’s is a pair Electro-Harmonix boxes—a Voice Box (Vocoder setting for “Gone in Bloom and Bough”) and MEL9 (an ethereal drone machine). The Boss GE-7 is an “always-on” pedal, trusted each night to carve out his desired low-mid punch (with an added clean boost on the level slider).

The beef and brawn of his setup is a three-tier attack with incremental wallop. The first two levels reside within the Strymon Sunset. The knockout blow is delivered by the aptly titled Empress Heavy.

Any self-respecting post-rocker (kidding!) owns a volume pedal and Jamieson’s choice foot-controlled unit is the Ernie Ball VP Jr. The Dave Knudson in him requires a looper pedal that does double time so he can chop it up, but he loves the TC Electronic Ditto X4 for its tape-stop mode, plus its hold function has been useful for recreating moments from the You Are the Conductor EP.

The next chunk of his board is dedicated to Strymon superpowers—a TimeLine (“seven digital-delay presets including reverse”), El Capistan (“only use it as an analog-tape simulator and the pedal I can’t live without”), blueSky (“it’s an unbelievable reverb pedal”), and Flint (“big part of “Ishmael” from the new record On Circles).

Lastly, you have a Boss RC-3 Loop Station for prepackaged interludes between songs, a mini black box (top left) that immediately cuts his signal for dramatic endings, and a TC Electronic PolyTune Mini keeps his guitars in check.